Creating a New Healthcare

What’s the alternative to Medicare for all? According to today’s guest, Ken Terry, award-winning healthcare journalist, it’s his alternative model of basic care for all. Ken believes we have to liberate primary care, pulling it out from under the pressures of poor reimbursement, overburdened staff, and an inability to effectively care for those on the cusp of chronic disease by reallocating our pr...

Dr. Marschall Runge is the author of the new book, “ The Great Healthcare Disruption ,” but he’s also someone who has studied primary care both in the US and across the world, and while he agrees it is currently failing, he offers some hope that it can get better.  In this episode, we talk about Dr. Runge’s research for the book that shows that the cost of healthcare per capita in the US is 2-3x w...

Back in 2011, Sean Duffy had a vision to change healthcare. So, he dropped out of Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School to found this company, Omada Health, that brought healthcare to people instead of the other way around.  Now valued at over $1 billion, Omada remains an innovative example of how to manage and treat chronic disease. But Sean’s not done yet. In this conversation, we t...

You can’t boil the ocean, and wow, does the state of primary care sometimes feel like an ocean. And if a behemoth like CVS Health can’t do it, it’s no surprise that the rest of us in healthcare feel at a complete loss for how to right this ship. But our guest today, Amy Compton-Phillips, Executive VP and Chief Medical Officer of CVS Health, takes a different approach. If ⅓ of Americans don’t have...

Welcome to a new season of Creating a New Healthcare!  This season, we’re diving into primary care. That’s right, primary care. Because right now, we are sucking at primary care, and the problem has reached critical mass. AND, we are sitting on the precipice of a revolution in primary care – the ability to provide contextual care, the ability to assess precursors to disease, and the ability...

We’re quick to blame genetics for our health and wellness issues, but the reality is that genetics only makes up 18% of our health destiny. That means the rest is up to us.  Our guest today, Dr. Grant Zarzour, has seen that first hand in his own family. When his son was diagnosed with moderate autism, he and his wife refused to accept the predictions for his future. They dove head first into the d...

With the recent explosion of GLP-1 drugs, the war on obesity seems to have taken a new and potent turn, but many are concerned about the recidivism, the side effects, and our reenergized obsession with being thin. Our guest today, Dr. Laure DeMattia, is a board certified family medicine physician and obesity specialist. For her, obesity is personal, as she has struggled her entire life with this c...

How many grams of protein do you need to be healthy? What about fiber? Supplements? It feels like we’re changing our diets daily to adhere to constantly shifting recommendations and none of it is really working to optimize our health. Christopher Gardner, Professor of Medicine in Nutrition Science at Stanford University, and featured advisor on the Netflix show, “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Exper...

As a society, and as an industrial complex, we’ve made health complicated…and expensive. But, epidemiology suggests that what we need to do to achieve and maintain personal health is really quite simple. Dr. Tom Frieden returns to the show to talk about the second half of his book, The Formula for Your Health. Through extensive research and review of hundreds of epidemiological studies, he distill...

Do you have an Apple watch? Fitbit? Oura ring? Woop? Wearables have taken over in the past decade with claims that by constantly monitoring our heart rate, sleep, respiration, and activity, they can provide health data that can change your life. But is that really possible? Or even plausible? Marco Benitez, former professional athlete, and the Founder and CEO of ROOK joins us on the Living Well se...

Last week, we talked about the six key drivers of personal health with Dr. Tom Frieden. But how does that factor into our conversation about the value (or not) of wearables and supplements? This week, Dr. Zeev Neuwirth and Producer, Jess Greenwood, are back to unpack that for you. We discuss the role wearables do and potentially could play in helping each one of us achieve and maintain better heal...

“Healthcare, in my opinion, is the ultimate team sport.” I love this quote from today’s guest. And it reminds me that patient experience is not just about the patient; it starts with every member of that patient’s care team. If they do not feel respected, trusted, and valued, it will absolutely impact the experience of their patients. Brian Carlson, VP of Patient Experience of Vanderbilt Health, k...

Can design be a determinant of health? We often think about the quality of the clinical care patients receive in our hospitals, the outcome metrics that determine funding and quality and safety rankings, the readmission rates that tell us how well we’re helping people get healthy and stay that way. But one thing we overlook is the quality, accessibility, and care in the buildings those same patien...

Let’s talk PBM’s.  What even is a P-B-M? Pharmacy benefit managers have been around since the 1960’s, although back then, they were basically claims processors. Things changed in the 80’s and 90’s following the first iteration of ERISA when employers saw PBMs as potential cost containment strategies. The industry continued to explode until 2007 when CVS acquired Caremark, and now the market is rea...

Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCs) have been around in concept for the past fifty years, but their recent explosion has caught the attention of healthcare systems and, frankly, patients. Why? Today’s guest, Adnan Qureshi, is a Managing Director with the Mergers and Acquisitions practice at Kaufman Hall. He provides strategic advisory services for healthcare providers and investors around the merge...

We’ve been talking a lot about healthspan and longevity in our recent episodes, but how do we get there? What changes would it take in the way we practice medicine to move towards a system that helps maintain wellness instead of a system that diagnoses and manages disease? This is the fundamental challenge that our guest today and her company, Radence, are tackling. Dr. Julie Chen is the Chief Med...

Dr. Daphne Bascom earned a DPhil/PhD in physiological sciences at the University of Oxford, a medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and completed fellowship training in microvascular and reconstructive surgery of the head and neck at Oregon Health Sciences University. She has more than two decades of executive leadership across health systems, health technology, and community health. Mos...

In the last decade of a person’s life, we spend 7x what we spend on taking care of them in all the years that came before. SEVEN TIMES! That’s not only unbelievable, it’s unsustainable, particularly as our aging population grows and life span increases. So, if it’s not just about increasing life span, or the number of years someone lives, what is it about? For Dr. Tzipi Strauss, Founde...

Without intervention, in 2050, everyone in the US population will either have Alzheimer’s disease or be caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease. That’s the state of where we’re at with cognitive decline. Right now, if you reach the age of 85, your chances of developing cognitive decline are 1 in 2. That’s right, 50%. But, BUT, new research is helping us understand the hidden drivers of cogniti...

“Health doesn’t just happen within the four walls of the hospital.” Or, at least, it shouldn’t have to. The work of our guest today, Dr. Eve Cunningham, and her team at Cadence, ensures that patients with chronic conditions can continue to live and thrive at home. Through remote patient monitoring but also behavioral support, medication titration, and relationship building, they ensure that patien...

We’re quick to blame genetics for our health and wellness issues, but the reality is that genetics only makes up 18% of our health destiny. That means the rest is up to us.  Our guest today, Dr. Grant Zarzour, has seen that first hand in his own family. When his son was diagnosed with moderate autism, he and his wife refused to accept the predictions for his future. They dove head first into the d...

Forty percent of the time, oncology care is not being delivered in concordance with guidelines. FORTY PERCENT! As our guest today explains, that’s not because of bad doctors. It’s because oncology care changes rapidly and because almost eighty percent of patients are being seen by a community oncologist, a physician who is responsible for treating ALL types of cancer, instead of a specialist. How...

It’s rare that an article title alone makes me want to stop what I’m doing and read it, but that’s what happened when I saw the title of Jess Craig’s recent article, “ Why More Doctors are Billing Their Patients Like it’s the 1920’s. ” In this article, and subsequently, our conversation here on the podcast, Jess explains what she means, citing the growing number of physician practices organized ar...

With the recent explosion of GLP-1 drugs, the war on obesity seems to have taken a new and potent turn, but many are concerned about the recidivism, the side effects, and our reenergized obsession with being thin. Our guest today, Dr. Laure DeMattia, is a board certified family medicine physician and obesity specialist. For her, obesity is personal, as she has struggled her entire life with this c...

“It doesn’t matter what is going on in your life, nutrition is relevant.” And, at least for most Americans, getting help with their nutrition is covered by their insurance. So, why isn’t working with a dietician a normal part of every American’s care plan? Our guest today is trying to address that question. Noah Kotlove, the CEO and Co-Founder of Berry Street, went through his own nutrition journe...